


First Attempt

by atomicmayo



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, I Love You, Love Confessions, M/M, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 19:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18676150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomicmayo/pseuds/atomicmayo
Summary: "You're normally in the middle of a soliloquy by now..."





	First Attempt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeaneCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaneCat/gifts).



Winter was the worst time for gem-based craziness – dark too early meant fewer exciting battles to watch from a safe distance and more ominous lights and sounds with unknown levels of danger attached. Cold, sluggish responses, grown apathetic to the fifth instance of an 'imminent threat' this year, led to little to no time for an evacuation. Frozen sand and patches of wet ice everywhere made frantic running precarious.

A gaggle of people stood under the eaves of the Big Donut – a guise of safety and a designated evacuation point, but mostly a shelter from the freezing rain. Numb fingers texted families. Voices chattered loudly through the cold to break through the noise.

“Didn't they fix that thing where all their friends were sick?”

“Yeah! I thought Steven was the King of Space or something now!”

“I can't get any good pictures for _my blog!_ ”

An amplified voice further down the boardwalk echoed unintelligibly in the rain – a tone comforting and authoritative, but too far away for anyone to register.

Someone weaved through the clutch of people and pushed their way inside. The electronic bell to the door of the doughnut shop chimed, but in the combined noise of the rain, the ocean, and the distant booming of the fight, no one outside heard it.

Jamie stood in front of the door for a moment, pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He visibly shivered as he tried to get the cold out and failed. He knew Bill was standing off to his right in front of the window, but didn't look up. Jamie ran a finger along his scarf to loosen it slightly while asking if Buck was all right, moving towards Bill to stand next to him.

“Yeah, he's at the other end of the boardwalk with his friends and Mayor Nanefua,” Bill replied, taking one last worried glance at his phone and slipping it into his pocket.

They watched through the windows past the crowd and saw a tall, trailing cloud of black curls fly onto the beach and suddenly right themself. A pink blur raced down to them and skidded to a stop. Both soaking, Stevonnie briefly whispered something into Lion's mane, then hopped on Lion's back and took off together back the way they came.

“I'm surprised more people haven't come inside,” Jamie shook his head as he put his mailbag on one of the plastic tables.

“Oh, you know how it is with this kind of thing - if you’re inside a building it's harder to run away if the danger comes to you. Better to be cold than trapped! The boardies are smart that way,” Bill replied, tapping the side of his head. He would have sounded almost proud if it weren't for the spike of tension in his voice.

Jamie considered saying something about how apparently _they_ weren't all that smart, but decided against it. Instead, he began to tug Bill's wrist in the direction of the break room. Once there, Jamie pulled the door closed just enough to where they couldn't be seen, and slipped his arms around Bill's neck wordlessly. Bill allowed himself a little relieved sigh and wrapped his arms around Jamie's waist, causing a slight 'wooshing' noise of movement against the nylon of Jamie's coat.

There was a long space of silence after a kiss – one just a little too mutually fearful to be the normal, quick kisses they would greet each other with when they were in private together.

“You're quiet,” Bill finally said through a slight hiccup of a nervous laugh. A couple beads of water from Jamie's clothes had begun to soak through his shirt.

“I suppose so.”

“It's just, this is the...” Bill mentally tallied for a second, “third time we've been together like this while a disaster is happening and...”

“Yeah?”

“You're normally in the middle of a soliloquy by now,” he remarked with a slight dip in his voice; a poor attempt at flirty teasing to lighten up the situation a little, “I always find them kind of ...comforting! Something to distract me while we're hiding or evacuating.”

Bill wouldn't have even known what a soliloquy was a few months earlier. In any other circumstance, Jamie would have noticed it and been impressed. Today though, he replied with a depressed shrug, eyes downcast. Bill took a second to indulgently stare at the thick eyelashes clumped together with rain - dark brows knit together in a troubled, pensive look. Bill wasn't an expert on reading emotion by any stretch, but in their time together he had at least learned how to read Jamie better – and something definitely didn't seem right.

“Hey,” Bill tried again, tightening the arms around Jamie's waist a little, “you're usually the one that's so good at talking. I get this is scary, of course - it always is! But you don't normally act like this. What's wrong, huh?”

Jamie sighed, “Bill, this town is dangerous – you know that.”

He slid his hands downward to rest them on Bill's chest. With the heavy suit jacket Bill always used to wear when he was mayor, Jamie assumed he would be bulkier, perhaps a bit chubby. Instead, Bill was strangely thin - even kind of lanky. He looked so much more vulnerable to Jamie since they had gotten together, like he had lost an important piece of armor.

Jamie's fingertips grazed the pink collarbone just visible at the top of Bill's shirt, and soon stared down at his hands as they lay on either side of a _Big Donut_ logo.

“There's life-threatening disasters happening all the time,” Jamie mused, troubled and murmuring, “aliens keep showing up - I nearly had my skull crushed by one of them! We went through all this mess to be together and there's this constant shadow of death lingering over our heads all the time. It’s... exhausting!”

Something off in the distance was big enough to shake ceiling tiles. A sprinkling of debris snowed down. People yelped outside. Teeth rattled.

Bill gulped and composed himself before he finally asked softly, “what can I do to make you feel better?” 

He tilted his head slightly to get Jamie to meet his eyes, but got no response.

“What do you want me to say?” he pleaded.

“You know how I always answer that question by now,” Jamie replied, smiling sadly.

Bill returned the smile and answered, “'the truth, warts and all'.”

It was the biggest, most frightening request anyone ever asked of him. It always was there, too; unspoken yet ever-present before they were even together - before he gave up on the seemingly endless cycle of trying and failing to win the town's love.

Sometimes, back when he was still mayor, Bill would catch a glimpse at Jamie sitting alone on the beach find himself struck with a type of fear he couldn’t really describe - something that clawed at his conscience with an odd twinge of pain; a loose stitch on the inside of his heart pulled taut to sting.

As he pushed feelings aside and made an idiot of himself time and time again, he would always go back and catch that occasional, little glimpse, trying to figure out that fear. Over months, he figured out what it was, even if he couldn’t fully form it into words.

If he got too close - became just a little too conversational, made eye contact just a little too long - he might break, and everything he had worked to keep hidden would come flooding out to that man he would see every afternoon sitting on the beach, staring at the ocean. There would be no controlling other people's feelings once he got to that level of honesty. Any illusion of power would be completely out his hands – completely at the mercy of someone else. Someone urging him to tell the truth without saying anything at all.

Things were different now - fear subsided, floodgates opened and acceptance eventually found, but Jamie's request was in its own way never-ending. Bill would beat himself up for forgetting so much, but he always was able to remember that one thing, regardless of what all his prior habits and the Dewey family legacy would drill into him.

He leaned forward and rested his head on Jamie's shoulder, cool and damp. The tiniest beads of water collected in the navy blue wool and deep brown locks of hair that curled inward towards Jamie's jawline.

Bill wanted it to be perfect on the first try, of course: grand, passionate – something he would say after one of those romantic dates he knew Jamie liked so much, but they were both terrible at successfully pulling off – after dinner, dessert and maybe a walk on the beach to view the sunset, or while cuddling in front of a warm, cozy fire.

Certainly not like this.

Not in the space of complete, buried silence, with all the sound sucked out of the room at once as something raced toward them to break the sound barrier; not clumsily falling out of his mouth all wrong – too hoarse, too fast. Soft and stupid and mumbled against the water droplets on an itchy scarf.

“I love you, Jamie.”

They jumped as they heard all the windows of the Big Donut shatter at the same time.

Bill had no idea of Jamie even heard him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fill for a fic prompt I got sent to my dewmie sideblog on tumblr (yes of course I have one - I'm practically the only one who ships it). 
> 
> It was from a list of prompts related to saying 'I love you' and I got "too quick, mumbled into your scarf". Thanks for the prompt, BeaneCat!


End file.
